CHICAGO: Yet another Indian American is in news in Chicagoland. Subhase Chander, 57, is under arrest for allegedly setting a 36 units apartment on 15859 Le Claire Ave. in Oak Forest on fire that killed his daughter, son-in-law and his grandson.
Oak Forest is southwest suburb of Chicago and the apartment unit that was allegedly set on fire housed a good number of immigrant working class Indians. Police say the fire started by Subhase Chander killed his pregnant daughter Monika Rani, her husband Rajesh Arora and their 3-year-old son Vinsh on December 29.
He is charged with three counts of first-degree murder and one count of intentional homicide of an unborn child, and is ordered held without bond by Cook County Judge Martin McDonough. A witness told the police that just after the fire started he saw a man matching Subhase Chander’s description in the hallway carrying a plastic container.
An attendant at a filling station told the police that Subhase Chander had bought a plastic container of gasoline two hours before the fire. Not long after the fire, the police found the container in a garbage bin outside his apartment building, just across the street from his daughter’s building. The fire that gutted the 36-unit building caused some residents to jump from second-floor balconies to escape the flames.
The Illinois State Police said the lab tests showed that an accelerant used in the fire was gasoline and that it matched gasoline found on the clothes of the suspect.
The motive behind this act is not very clear. He is reported to have said that he was unhappy with her daughter marrying Rajesh. It is alleged that Subhase was an alcoholic and that he used to demand money from Rajesh often. Sources say that Rajesh might have refused this time, irritating Chander. Besides, it is not for the first time that Chander had a brush with law.
According to the Chicago police records, he was questioned in 2003 regarding a suspicious fire following an alleged attack on his son, Arun, then 16. The case was dropped after his son declined to pursue it. A year later he was convicted of shoplifting after stealing a bottle of whiskey from a Dominick’s.
Later that year, police were called to Chander’s apartment complex after he had left his grandson, Vansh, then three-months- old, unattended in the landlord’s office. Monika worked at a McDonald’s while Rajesh worked in a nearby gas station. He had come to this country ten years ago and dreamt of owning a gas station. According to Rajesh’s parents who are in India, the couple had a happy married life.
Vansh had been left with Rajesh’s parents when he was seven months old and was brought here last July. Meanwhile, a new twist to the entire case is the finding of unknown bones in the Claire Station Apartments at 15859 Le Claire Ave. in Oak Forest, according to a spokesman for the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office. It is not determined if the bones are human or those of an animal.
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